Volume 41 of Methods in Microbiology is a methods book designed to highlight procedures that will revitalize the purposes and practices of prokaryotic systematics.

This volume will notably show that genomics and computational biology are pivotal to the new direction of travel and will emphasise that new developments need to be built upon historical good practices, notably the continued use of the nomenclatural type concept and the requirement to deposit type strains in at least two service culture collections in different countries.